Investigating Persona Viewing Behavior: An Eye-Tracking Study on Portrait-Format Persona Profile

The study offers empirical evidence on how users visually interact with digital personas. Conducting an eye-tracking study in a major news organization's premises, we analyzed the fixations of 29 participants interacting with a standard portrait-format persona profile. Our analysis of 87 repetitions calculates significant transitions between the persona information elements using n-grams from (a) when the profile is first encountered, to (b) when the profile is presented for the second time, and (c) after the participants are familiar with the profile, seeing it for the third time. Collectively, there are a small number of statistically significant transitions, suggesting an L pattern of persona-viewing behavior, and the L pattern holds regardless of the repetition. Results have implications for the design of persona profiles by placing persona information to accommodate users’ natural viewing tendencies.